I must been out of my mind By Terry Cobb University of Maryland Baltimore County I wonder as I sit here on Thanksgiving day, how do I get into these situations. That is, spending yet another holiday working on a show and knowing full well that I am the only person on the "team" doing so. Anyway, before you turn the page, this is not yet another diatribe about the overworked technical director, although it perhaps could be. I can't really complain. I got myself into this one. Read on... Well, you see, this design comes in that consists of a full stage painted groundcloth, a raked platform covered with mirror, and a panel drop that is a photographic picture of an Italian building. Not a huge set except that there is a 2 1/2 week turnaround, no painters on staff and, in fact, only four students in the class to build and run two shows. There is the minor item of budget limitations precluding hiring painters. In addition, the panel drop is 25' high by 40' wide and the stage is only 12' high. The only area large enough to lay the thing out in is the stage which doesn't have the down time. What to do? The platform is no problem. We had the ground cloth built because it cost no more than buying the fabric and the construction would be better than we could do in house. We do the best we can about painting it. The only remaining item is the backdrop. On this hangs the tale to follow. I should explain that by "panel drop" I mean that the drop is in strips of various widths between 2 and 5 feet wide. These strips move in the course of the production. The desire is that these strips be somewhat stiff so that they hold a large arc shape at times. The panels are to be moved by actors and crew which limits the weight acceptability. The first thought is that sign companies do this kind of thing all the time. True, they do, and they could scan the photo and print it on strips of plastic; for only $13000. This is three times the budget for the entire production. So that's the situation. For various reasons involving staffing, time, expertise, space, and money, the piece just can't be done. A few days later, actually nights, I wake up with the idea that I could print this thing with my computer printer. After all, I have a scanner, a fast computer, and a wide carriage inkjet printer, what else do I need? What else indeed! So I start experimenting with a xerox of the picture. Initially, the thought is to print it on matte plastic film. We couldn't find a source and so moved to the next alternative, pin feed white computer paper. The paper turned out to be better for image visibility. The plan was to laminate the paper to something for strength. The pin feed paper would have eliminated many of the later problems in printing. Next, "Oh, we have some photo background paper left over from another show, it's thicker". Print looks better on background paper but loss of pin feed registration is a definite minus. A bit later the question is raised, "Can it be printed on cloth?". I had wondered the same thing so I take a piece of muslin, tried it, and it seemed to work. I still working with small sample pieces and things seem to be working. The next challenge is scanning the image. Now scanning an image is easy, scanning an image in such a way that it will look good when a 5x7 inch magazine photo is enlarged to 25 x 40 feet is not. First of all, my scanner is a Logitech Scanman Plus, not a bad scanner but a black and white, not a gray scale scanner. When I start this I don't really understand the difference. Although the Scanman is a 100-400 dpi scanner, the black and white scans were blocky and I am having strange scaling problems that don't make sense to me at the time. I'm working with the dos(IBM) scan program so I decide to try the Windows program that came with the scanner. Oops!, works with Windows 3.0, not Windows 3.1 (the current version). A call to Logitech and I find that I can buy a program that with work with Windows 3.1 for $79.95. I order it and wait a week for it to arrive. So I get this snazzy Windows program, Fototouch. It works great, even manages to scan (really extrapolate) gray scale, but the image is only 1/4 the resolution and size I scanned in. This drives me crazy for a day or two until I finally read hidden in the manual that they have to divide the resolution by four to get gray scale. This means that I can really only scan 100 dots per inch which is blocky when you to a 60x enlargement. But if I have no choice I can live with that. When I discover the trap of Windows, the printer drivers tend to be single page oriented, that is written for 8.5 x 11 inch paper [only], in some cases even if the printer will print 13.5 inches wide. The drivers are compiled and therefore not easy to alter. Microsoft does not want to hear about printer drivers and considers them the responsibility of the printer manufacturer. AND, in my case, Kodak had no plans to write a Windows 3.1 driver for the Diconix 300w printer (a discontinued model). Although the printer can emulate both IBM and Epson printers, all those drivers were written for 8.5 x 11 inch pages. All completely useless because I need a 13.5 x 300 inch page. Next, I find that PC Paintbrush IV, Publisher's Paintbrush (an older version), and the paint program that comes with Windows are totally inadequate to the task so I go out and buy PC Paintbrush 5+ (99.95). A very nice program, has a driver for my printer, supports the Logitech scanner, oops, but only in black and white, not gray scale. And while I'm at it, I've also determined that I'll need extra hard disk space to do this project. I hear good things about disk compression programs so I buy SpeedStor ($65). I install Speedstor. Great! My 200 Meg disk which only has 30 Megs empty now has 120 megs empty. (Meg is technospeak for megabyte) The next "gotcha". Windows and Paint programs use temp files. And, in the case of paint programs working with the size of image I am using, very large temp files. These will not work on compressed disks. So I start incrementally uncompressing the disk trying to find a happy medium. It doesn't exist. Manipulating an image of the size with which I am working can take 30 to 40 megs and sometimes multiples of that. So out I go for a second 200 meg hard drive ($400). I decide to get the magazine photo enlarged photographically to assist in maintaining fine resolution. I have an 8x10 and a 16x20 made. No problems here. Just takes a week. Now that I have an up-to-date paint program and a decent sized photograph from which to work, I think I am set. But, surprise, I still can't get a decent resolution on the scan and matching the pieces is a pain. A "gotcha" about hand scanners, they want to be page scanners. This means that the maximum length they can scan is 11 inches in most cases. The small photo does not allow enough resolution. The large one if 14+ inches across the narrow dimension. Oh, hell, I have to do two separate scans for each strip and make them fit together end to end. This is not easy with a hand scanner and a 60x enlargement. A 1/16 inch error in alignment magnifies to almost 4 inches. Eureka, an idea, there is an Image Lab at school with all sorts of graphics equipment and software that should make this easy. They have a flat bed scanner and high resolution video and "good" graphics software. The scanner could only take the 8x10 photo, ok, it looked beautiful on the monitor, and then, here we go, the software isn't designed to reliably cut the picture up into identically sized strips. No problem. Save the image. Pass it on the network to a Macintosh that has a publishing program. This appears to work, I spend three hours breaking the picture up into 38 strips, don't look so shocked, the amount of memory required for each of these is about half a megabyte. I think my problems are over. I get home, try to print one of the strips and find that the Macintosh as made it all useless by reducing the resolution to it's screen resolution which is half the resolution of the other systems I am using. Back to the drawing board. Again. The "gotcha" about Macs in my experience is that they use small screens to make their output look better. The resolution is usually fairly low. I forgot to ask and got caught. Now I know that my personal equipment is better suited to this project than that of the Image Lab. I continue to work on getting a good quality scan technique. Late Sunday afternoon, I get totally fed up with my b/w scanner and go out to buy a gray scale scanner. A trip to Computer City and I have a Niscan/GS gray scale scanner(approx $150) This scanner is packaged with DOS software or with Windows software but not both. The Niscan was a bit cheaper that the others but not the cheapest. The box description looked like it would do the things I needed. As it turned out, the scanner/software made good scans but often when using the software my monitor would loose sync and I would have to reset the machine to recover. A call to customer service suggested that I had a hardware conflict with another card. I did have one with a SoundBlaster Pro Card but resolving that did not solve the problem. Another hurdle. A call to the Zsoft (PC Paintbrush) bulletin board and I find that they have a driver for the Niscan. I download it. It works; the sync problems do not recur. I suspect the problem is with the Niscan software but I haven't pursued it at this time. Now I think all is well. I scan the large photo in 14 (count 'em) pieces. From each of these I extract six strips which represent the upper or lower part of a panel. I start processing and printing the strips. At this point, I'll describe the systems (yes, plural) that I am using. My personal machine is a Gateway (IBM clone) 486-33 mHz w/ 8 meg memory (5 meg ram disk for this project), 212 meg hard disk (now two 212 meg hard disks), VESA monitor (1024x768 resolution). From the office I have a vintage IBM PS2-60 286-10 mHz w/ 60 meg hard disk. Our secretary just decided to replace her machine and donate the old one to the department, a 286-12 mHz clone w/ 20 meg hard disk. The main printer I plan to use is my Kodak Diconix 300w (inkjet, prints 13.5" wide). By pure coincidence, I come across two HP Quietjet printers surplus in another department (also inkjet, print 13.2" wide, and, by pure chance, use the same ink cartridge.) At this point I have PC Paintbrush on the 486-33 w/ scanner and Diconix printer. I know from previous experience that the Diconix runs through an ink cartridge in 2-3 pages of hi-resolution graphics printing. At $11 per cartridge, this can become very expensive. I also know that the cartridges can be refilled with Scripto fountain pen ink with a hypodermic syringe (they take 2cc of ink). So the plan is to do this to keep the cost down. I am also planning at this point to fold the fabric, stitch it together, so that I have a 27 inch wide print done in 2 passes. Printing the first test reveals yet another series of problems. The two layers of fabric move and creep, jamming up the machine. The Scripto ink, while working fairly well on paper, does not produce a black image and does not feed reliably. The cartridges do not seem to be lasting as long as they normally do. And, as I should have suspected, the fabric, even after going to a single layer, will not feed through the machine straight without a lot of attention. As already mentioned, a 27 inch folded piece of muslin became a 13.5 inch single layer. The sizing in the muslin was destroying the ink cartridge. Washing the muslin with bleach (which added some contrast (whiter fabric) gets rid of the sizing. I found on trying an ironed strip that starch was required for the fabric to feed at all straight through the machine. I decided to try Deskjet refill packs as an alternative to the Scripto ink. This worked quite well although I am still not convinced that it is the same as the original ink, in fact I know that it's not because the original ink is fairly waterproof when dry and the refill ink is not. We're still working on that. Also, the $10 Global refill packs seem to be the same quality as the ones (a different brand) sold by PC Zone for $16. Diconix cartridges run about $11 on the street, HP Thinkjet/Quietjet cartridges run about $10, you can sometimes get them for $8-9 mailorder. If you are a school, find the contract vender and get them for $7.65. These are the same cartridge as far as I can see. They both work in my Diconix. Now the Diconix is working as well as it is going to work. I try one of the Quietjets. Oops, here we go again, no driver to run the Quietjet at 13.5 inches wide. The Thinkjet is 8", the Diconix driver will make is run at about 10", I try every other driver included with PC Paintbrush with no luck. A call to the Zsoft bulletin board confirms that there isn't one, but I can fill out a request and maybe they'll write one (or not). In fairness, they do support a lot of printers and are interested in supporting more both new and old. They just can't drop everything and write me a driver today. I understand. I start looking elsewhere. Compuserve is promising, I find a "Windows" driver but stupid, stupid, stupid, it is written to print 8 inches wide only. Useless. I get fed up and start experimenting. The PC Paintbrush Diconix driver will make the Quietjet print about 10" wide. The Diconix is 160 dpi (Dots Per Inch) and the Quietjet is 192 dpi. Of course, I have no documentation for the Quietjet. I print out the drivers for the Diconix and the Thinkjet, compare them looking for differences, find a likely looking area and start plugging in numbers. I get lucky and within couple of hours of trial and error over the next few days find the bytes to change and what to change them to for the Quietjet to print full width. So now it prints the correct size, I'm set, right. I have three printers and therefore can get this done much faster, right. Wrong. Yes, it works, but the Quietjet eats ink cartridges. This turns out to be, I think, because the cartridge runs closer to the platen than the Diconix. With both printers, the cartridges don't last as long as with paper. I think this may be a combination of the friction of the fabric and that fibers from the fabric get forced into the inkjet orifices. This probably accounts for the higher resolution with the same cartridge, I know it doesn't print as tall a line on each pass. I somewhat remedied this problem by remodeling the machine. The print mechanism is supported on a Teflon shoe as it runs back and forth. Putting two layers of electrical tape inside the shoe (No more. More messes up the optical sensors) lifts the print head up and away slightly. At the left end of travel, a little filing was required to accompany this lift. A second alteration, drilling, tapping, and adding a screw to the drive gears therefore defeating the platen clutch is required to pull the muslin through and around the platen. Mechanical problems fixed, ready to print. I print a couple of strips, and then find that my scan pieces don't line up. I had scanned all the top passes and then all the bottom passes. Wasn't careful about alignment. Redo all the scans, several hours of scanning and processing. This time I am very careful about measuring. I have to mask the join point so than I can put them together precisely, top and bottom. I finish and start printing again. They still don't line up, remember 1/64 inch on the picture is 1 inch on the print. It's close enough that I can correct most of it when breaking the scan into strips. Six pieces have to be corrected by stitching together pieces from two different scans. Try to avoid this, it is not easy. Must take a lot of memory, I had a lot of machine lockups while trying to do this. Also, the scans are of slightly different lengths. These are because I moved at slightly uneven speeds while scanning. Even scanning is more difficult at high resolutions. Errors are more evident with high enlargements. The next problem is that the program times out and aborts printing or freezes up while I am changing print cartridges. Another call to the bulletin board (Zsoft). The reply is that they tried it and yes, it does abort, no fix at this time. Gads!. I'm about to pull my hair out but I'm too far into this to give up now. I know that I can copy a file to a printer from DOS and, if the printer is not ready, I get an "Abort, Retry, Fail" message. PC Paintbrush cannot print to file so what do I do? I finally remember that I read somewhere about redirecting printer output. I find that I have a nifty little public domain (I think) program PRN2FILE that takes anything sent to the printer and places it in a file of whatever name I choose. Great! There is another plus here. The print files turn out to be 2-5 megabytes each but using PKzip, the compression program used by many bulletin boards, including ours, these can be compressed to 200-300 Kilobytes. This allows them to be moved by disk to a slower machine for printing. This printing is accomplished without having to run from PC Paintbrush. This is a definite plus. I try PC Paintbrush on the IBM at one point. It takes several minutes to load and getting ready to print a fairly small print segment took several hours. The half strips take 15-20 minutes on the 486-33. The printer is the slowest device in the chain anyway. Now the fast machine is creating printer files very fast for the two other machines that are driving the printers. Printing the strips takes around three hours on the Diconix, longer on the Quietjets. That's 100+ hours of printing time. A little less with two printers and that doesn't count the time for straightening cloth and refilling cartridges. Except for the files aborting prematurely on occasion, requiring the generation of a printer file for the remainder of the strip, the process works after a fashion. The result is not a good as I hope due to inconsistencies in ink density and fabric feed problems causing registration variations. We are going to try to touch it up with an airbrush. That's tomorrow. This was a neat idea that probably would have worked with the right conditions. These are: 1. Don't do this the first time on a short deadline. 2. Find a material that can be consistently fed through the printer. 3. Use a printer with an ink cartridge large enough to print a whole piece, in this case 25' without refill. Also, that can maintain print quality and density through a strip. 4. Do the scanning with a flatbed scanner, i.e., all at once in one pass. 5. If you're doing graphics, make sure that any software you buy supports your printer and scanner before you buy it. 6. You need a fast computer, lots of RAM, lots of hard disk, lots of resolution in the monitor. (get it, lots, lots, lots) 7. If you don't already have all of this, lots of money. No, I'm not rich, and yes, I bought all that stuff out of my pocket. (I haven't gotten the bills yet.) In addition, expenditures are several hundred dollars in muslin, only about $200 for the drop, the size was enlarged after I purchased and cut the strips. We used is for rehearsals. About $500 dollars was spent on ink cartridges and refill packs. We still have to retouch and seal the pieces. Seal because they are moved and walked on continuously during the production.